Zipp 285/280, TUNE Mig70/Mag190, Cx-ray build

I woke up early this morning to propose an article presenting my 2006 race wheels. In 2005, my wheels were the ones you can find in the album Zipp 280, DT240s, aerolite/cx-ray. I unfortunately broke the front rim during the ‘Porte Océane’ (Elite 2 race at the end of august for the ones who may know), so I had to rebuild the front wheel. I took advantage of this to rebuild and updated the rear wheel as well.

Front wheel:

I was immediately seduced by the new Zipp 285 presented at the Interbike salon two months ago and got one as soon as possible. The advantage of this rim is its weight that is quite light for a rim of this kind; 300gr for 44mm, but also thanks to the dimples that reduce the drag its aerodynamically improved to its maximum. In order to take full advantage of this trait, I chose to lace only 20 CX-Ray spokes. It’s not a problem since this rim appears to be far more sturdier than the old 280. The stickers on the 285 are molded in the rim, it will not be possible to remove them as easily as on the 280. Therefore, I chose to go with red hubs and red nipples in order to best match the color theme of the Zipp decals. I also used short nipples to reduce the drag. The hub choice couldn’t be anything else but the TUNE Mig70. It’s attainable with any drilling, in all available colors and the quality is simply awesome.

Rear wheel:

For the rear wheel, I didn’t really have choices since I kept the 32 hole Zipp 280 rim for good solidity, a good stiffness and firstly to reduce the total price! The rear wheel aerodynamics is much less important than the front, so it wasn’t an issue to mount a 32 spoke wheel. The hub, spoke, and nipple colors, had to be the same as for the front wheel, actually I didn’t have any alternatives to red hubs, nipples and black spokes. For the new build I selected the excellent TUNE Mag190 hub. It’s very light with an incredible reliability. The bearings do however require some running-in to be real smooth.

The set:

Total weight: 1106gr

Finally, Zipp decals will be applied to the rear wheel for a matching look.